"I shall be there too, my lad," thought the Kurd to himself, and with that he leaped upon the horse and grasped fast his three and a half ells long spear; "if you want the horse come for it now!"
"I'm not going to fetch it at once, so don't put yourself out," Kökényesdi assured him. "You may do as you like with him till morning," and with that he sat down on the edge of the ditch, wrapped himself up in his _bunda_, and leaned his chin on his big stick.
The Kurd durst not take his eyes off him, he scarce ventured even to wink, lest the horse-dealer should practise magic in the meantime.
He never stirred from the spot, but drew his hat deep down and regarded the Kurd from beneath it with his foxy eyes.
Meanwhile it was drawing towards evening. The Kurd's eyes now regularly started out of his head in his endeavours to distinguish the form of Kökényesdi through the darkness. At last he grew weary of the whole business.
The Kurd waited and gazed again. Everything seemed to him to be turning round, and blue and green wheels were revolving before his eyes.
"Go away, I tell you, for if this ditch was not a broad one I would leap across and bore you through with my spear."
The Kurd flew into a rage, dismounted from the horse, seized his spear, and climbing down into the ditch, viciously plunged his spear into the sleeping form before him.
But how great was his consternation when he discovered that what he had looked upon as a man in the darkness was nothing but a propped up stick, on which a _bunda_ and a hat were hanging! While he had been staring at Kökényesdi, the latter had crept from out of the _bunda_ beneath his very eyes and hidden himself in the ditch.
The Kurd had not yet recovered from his astonishment when he heard the crack of a whip behind his back, and there was Kökényesdi sitting already on the back of Haly Pasha's charger, Shebdiz, and the next moment he had leaped the ditch above the Kurd's head, shouting back at him:
"The trench is not broad enough for this horse, my son!"
Master Szénasi was one of those who had been sent to find Kökényesdi, and he now arrived at Demerser, the famous robber's most usual resting-place in those days, and pushing his way forward told him that the gentlemen of Szathmár had sent him to ask him, Kökényesdi, to assist them in their expedition against the Turks.